The Arabic Alphabet and Other Languages

With the arrival of Islam and the conversion of many regions, a number of languages adopted the Arabic alphabet even though they bear no linguistic similarity.

Today, Persian (or Farsi, spoken in Iran; Dari in Afghanistan; and Tajik in Tajikistan), Pashto (spoken in Afghanistan and Pakistan), Kurdish (spoken in parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey), and Urdu (spoken in Pakistan and parts of India) are among the languages that adopted Arabic letters. Turkish also used Arabic letters until 1928, when the country officially switched to the Latin alphabet.